Final Fantasy XI has tightened up its focus on its core audience: the hardest of the hardcore. I was privileged enough to be shown a glimpse of all this stuff I'll never actually see for myself: cutscenes from the Wings of the Goddess storyline, the new high-level "third artifact armor" gear, and level 90 characters and abilities. All this requires extensive grouping up, something I haven't been able to do in FFXI in over a year. It's tough being a solitary reviewer of a multiplayer game! At least, it's tough when you can't find a good group to play with. Which puts me in a somewhat awkward position to write this report: if you're like me, you don't have any friends still playing FFXI, you don't have a LS to return to, and you don't even have the latest Abyssea expansions, it's a steep uphill climb to dive back in. But if you do have all of those things, you've got a lot of exciting things to look forward to in October's FFXI update!

I spent many years playing FFXI with my Mithra Dragoon before my Linkshell dissolved, so here's my highlight of the tour: a Mithra Dragoon wearing part of the new Artifact Armor executing a weaponskill that's finally better than Penta Thrust! Kaboom!

I was pretty impressed as the tour guides were showing me around. It sounds like there's lots of cool stuff for those hard-core high-level people who have pearls for the still-active linkshells. Lots of loot to get, mainly. With all the new levels and new Abyssea areas, there's lots to do and get, especially with new Abyssea currency and assembling rare drops into upgraded gear. To top it all off, there are new loot-dropping bosses that play a big part in getting those awesome upgrades, so have fun whacking those pinatas apart. This big iron giant we killed on the tour was especially fun to destroy.

Sorry for the delay in posting this. Last week was another FFXI tour, this time for the July update and the new Vision of Abyssea add-on pack. There's a lot of new and interesting stuff, including new areas, new battle systems, lots of new gear, not to mention higher levels and more abilities for (almost) everyone.

Two of the new abilities I got to see were for Black Mage and Scholar. Black Mages got a sort of "mana shield" ability, letting them use their huge mana pools to survive a few hits if they "accidentally" (cough cough) pull aggro from a monster. To help them not pull aggro, Scholars now have the Libra ability, which displays how much hate everyone in the party has for the targetted monster. I also saw a few new job traits and abilities for Warriors, giving them some bonuses to make them better tanks, or to do more damage at the expense of crit when they're dps-spec.

One of the biggest additions with Vision of Abyssea are the new Abyssean zones, sort of parallel universes of existing areas. They work as timed dungeons: you zone into a staging area, talk to an NPC, and you get a 30 minute buff that lets you "exist" in the parallel world. Then, off you go to kill monsters and and collect a new type of currency, the abbysean equivalent of conquest points. Though, once your timer is up *poof* you get teleported back to the real world.

Got an update about FFXI's new add-on scenario, Vision of Abyssea, in my email box so I thought I'd share. By and large, you can get information straight from Squeenix's site, which includes oddities such as requiring the Rise of the Zilart and Wings of the Goddess expansions, but no word of Chains of Promathia or Treasures of Aht Urghan. Huh, go figure.

Oh, and a neat promo picture to share!

The weapons on display at the promo site are very nifty, though I wonder how difficulty they'll be to obtain. From what I gather, these sets of add-ons are focusing on battles, rather than story missions, so it'll be an interesting change of pace from the previously released scenarios. At only $9.99 each, they're less than a month's subscription anyways, so everyone may as well pick them up and see!

Amidst all the FFXIV hype, I got an interesting email the other day: an invitation to a tour in Final Fantasy XI. I've always enjoyed the FFXI tours so I instantly accepted, and I certainly wasn't disappointed with all of the new additions to see, but throughout my mind was that nagging question: FFXIV?

Not to worry: both games will run concurrently and there will be plenty of content to keep FFXI running strong. What kind of content? Well that's what this tour is all about!

I suppose I could sum up everything in the same sort of bullet-points that PR reports would use, but FFXI Clopedia documents those well enough already. Some of the new additions are a bit 'meh' to me; the new summons have neat eye candy but as I never really played SMN I wasn't terribly excited by them. Instead, let me talk about the additions that I, personally, found interesting.

Though, I totally admit, the graphics and effects for the new summons are very cool.

I've gotten an invitation to another FFXI tour - I guess it's an April thing - but my email box also had another goodie: some preview stuff about Final Fantasy XIV. I plan on watching this sequel very closely, as I'm a huge fan of its predecessor. Until I get more information, here's a little teaser!

The good folks at Final Fantasy XI took me on a tour of the latest content, featuring the new Crystalline Prophecy add-on. They also sent me their new Security Token for my FFXI account. Read on to find out all about both!

First up, Crystalline Prophecy. It's a new add-on this April that only costs $9.99 to add to your account. It tells the story of... well, I'm not entirely sure on all the details yet, but I did see the opening cut-scene, so I can safely say crystals and prophecies are definately involved. But that's true of all FFXI stories, eh?

Anyhow, what's unique about it is that it's very much desigend to be optional content. You add it on, or you don't, but it's all good. There's two more add-on adventure coming soon, and none of them require any other to be installed. So if you only want to play one or two of the three, you won't have any technical problems doing that. You'll just miss out on what you don't buy!